The journey continues!
Amid the chaos and disruption the last 2 years has bought, we managed to get a break and board a plane out of Australia passing through Doha before arriving 36 hours later in Yerevan, Armenia. On the grounds of the guesthouse/campground Camping 3Gs, the Troopy had been patiently waiting. The owner of Camping 3Gs is the extremely accommodating Dutch ex-pat Sandra who had taken the Troopy in and cared for it for the last 18 months.
The transit out of Australia was an eerie experience. The airport was open though empty apart from us, the occasional cleaner, and a few federal police officers. There appeared to be only 3 flights that day, our QATAR one seemed to be the busiest with roughly 50 people on board. We had a comfortable ride to DOHA with whole rows to ourselves; landing in DOHA though was a different experience. Coming from Australia where the fear of coming close to strangers was imprinted on us daily, we stepped into a fully functioning airport at rush hour. It was as if this little pandemic didn’t exist. It was chaos and took a moment to adjust and find a place to escape the bustle to wait out our 14 hour lay over. The following flight to Yerevan was similar; completely full, masks optional.
We arrived into Yerevan at 3am, we thought this was a crazy time to be arriving though apparently this is normal. We breezed through immigration and surprisingly, us and our 7 huge duffel bags of clothes, camp equipment, and odd car parts and accessories was waved through customs and we were free and out into the hot dry night of Yerevan. For 2 years we had communicated with Sandra over the internet though this was the first time we had met in person. The fact she insisted on making the hour long drive to pick us up at 3am is testament to her generosity. For a long time the possibility of getting back to the Troopy felt like a far off dream. With the distraction of work and the COVID media circus the Troopy seemed to be existing in a parallel universe talked about as an old friend of fiction. Working right up to the moment we flew out, the distraction continued until the point that those two universes appeared to collide and we were standing there back in front of the Troopy again taking a moment to realise it had actually happened.
The Troopy had arrived into Armenia by truck and with us on the other side of the world the normal customs procedures were somewhat overlooked by the officials at the border. While this slip up appeared to make life easier at the time, the by-product when it arrived in Yerevan was a mountain of subsequent procedures, notarised documentation, and translated phone calls between us, Sandra, Armenian Customs, brokers, lawyers, and a few other notable people. With persistence and gentle pressure several weeks later the Troopy was released into the care of Sandra. With the batteries flat it was rolled from the truck and pulled onto a tilt tray to make it’s way to the guesthouse.
The planned short hiatus turned into 2 winters and nearly 3 summers. Armenia experiences cold winters and some warm summers ranging from -20 degC to 35/40 degC. Being stored outside things had begun to perish and the Troopy was starting to look a bit tired.
Through a slight case of serendipity, a flat tyre in storage led the local mechanic, who came to repair it, to notice considerable damage to the Troopy’s tail shaft. This was definitely not there when we left it so we can only assume the flat batteries when it was freighted resulted in it being loaded onto the truck with a forklift. With out being proper chassis blocking the weight of the Troopy bent like a dog’s leg. Thankfully we found this out before we left Australia as finding compatible parts in foreign countries can be a challenging exercise. The most logical solution was to try and procure one in Armenia and save the hassle with freight, unfortunately Toyota Armenia however quoted $3500 so that put it way off the table. Shipping anything to and around Australia at the time was suffering significant delays; thankfully the T.O.A forum came to the rescue and we had a new Terrain Tamer tail shaft in hand before departure. Trying to explain to the young girl at the Qatar check in desk what the long heavy hollow steel mortar shaped object in the bag was was fun, we resorted to agreeing to simply put ‘car part’ on the forms. This was one of the many parts which we could only imagine would have attracted a few questions if Customs had’ve wanted to check our belongings on arrival in Yerevan. Not that there was anything wrong with carrying these parts though the ‘unknown’ leads to questions, this coupled with a language barrier could have turned that 3am arrival into a 5am release..........
Due to YT description limits that's all we can fit in though if you've come this far and want to check out the full description head over here (watch the video here on YT though as its better audio) - / 62715246
26 авг 2024
